1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a chronograph timepiece having a time indicating function and a time measuring function.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there has been developed a chronograph timepiece in which a plurality of motors are mounted to respectively drive a plurality of hands and which is equipped with a chronograph function that is, a time measuring function, in addition to a function to indicate time information as a basic function wherein the driving of the hands is effected electrically by the motors, with the zero-restoring of chronograph hands being effected by a mechanical structure such as a heart cam (See, for example, JP-A-61-73085 and JP-A-2006-90769).
In the related-art chronograph timepiece, stepping motors are used as the motors. As shown in FIG. 7, drive pulses of different polarities are alternately supplied to a section between a first terminal OUT1 and a second terminal OUT2 of a drive coil, whereby the motors are continuously rotated in a fixed direction. When a reset operation is performed on an operation unit, the driving by the drive pulses is stopped at that point in time, and the driving of the motors is stopped.
In this way, in the related-art chronograph timepiece, the driving of the motors is immediately stopped through the reset operation, so that, due to the cam zero-restoring at the time of reset operation, backlash is generated in a train wheel for transmitting the rotation of the motors to the chronograph hands. Thus, even when the cam zero-restoring is unlocked and drive pulses are output to thereby drive the motors at the time of the subsequent start operation, hand movement is not effected by an amount corresponding to the backlash, with the result that the hand movement operation of the chronograph hands is delayed.